Game of Thrones: Dead kings, bodiless hands and betrayal

Sorry so slow this week. I’d love to blame the delay on Westeros-esque happenings. That I was set upon by White Walkers or Wildlings or direwolves or something, but it was more like vacation and then illness. Anyway, all this talk on TV and radio about various business-related bubbles bursting. Well, we’re getting close to a burst bubble in the Seven Kingdoms. Littlefinger’s blade at Ned’s neck came damned close to popping it. But alas with just three episodes remaining, GOT continues to build tension to nearly blivet proportions, and by that I mean the Urban Dictionary version and not the Wiki version.

So you get this picture of a withered old bugger living in a castle wiping his rump with money right? No! Tywin Lannister is a man of action. He’ll butcher his own stag (major foreshadowing here if you remember your sigils), thank you very much, gutting it and then going to work on skinning the thing, while having a conspiratorial conversation with his son Jaime, who ran off after his guards killed Ned’s guys and wounded Ned.

Having reduced his feared/evil son to a ninny in the amount of time it takes to pull the intestines from a dead stag, he then initiates a delicious conversation full of manipulation and disappointment and encouragement. He picks at his kid’s vanity, he picks at his courage and before he sends Jaime crying from the room he puts the future of the family’s pride on his son’s shoulders. Jaime will get 30,00o men (!!) to lead to Cat’s girlhood home. In theory it’s to liberate Tyrion, but when he snarls, “And remind her that Lannisters pay their debts,” it’s pretty clear he has something un-financial in mind.

He fesses that little Tyrion is the “lowest” of the Lannisters, but the Imp being a prisoner, he believes, diminishes the family name, which is the only thing that matters to him. He wants to build a dynasty and he’s hoping his humiliated son will lead it.

As Michael Bluth would’ve said to his son, “Good talk,” and then back to slicing up the stag.

Cut to Cersei and Ned sitting outside. Ned confronts her. Surely she’ll be terrified into fleeing King’s Landing, right? No way. She’s a Lannister. She counters with the fact that the Targaryens maintained brother-on-sister action for thousands of years. The conversation that follows is another blivet of tragic misunderestimation on noble Ned’s part.

He tells Cersei to leave. She ain’t leaving. He threatens her with Robert’s wrath. She ain’t leaving. “What of my wrath?” she asks. This is not the sound of one who is scared. And then she asks him about the day the Mad King was killed. Why didn’t Ned go after the throne when he had the chance?

And here comes the hot sauce . . . Cersei: “When you play the game of thrones you win or die. There is no middle ground.”

Technically the Starks hail from the north, but y’know that Ned’s land is stuck between the mysterious threat of the White Walkers in the far north and the conniving awfulry in King’s Landing kind of puts him in his own little Middle Earth. And in this land that’s an undesireable place.

Cut to Ros the prostitute auditioning (loudly) for Littlefinger after her 20-year ride from Winterfell via turnip truck. Mostly this scene serves two purposes: 1. lots of bare breasts. 2. a chance to let you know that Littlefinger, despite his promises to Cat, might not be the ally she hoped he was.

Ros and her cohort urge Littlefinger to join them in their practice session, but he claims he’s saving himself for another, which sounds a lot like something Florentino Ariza might say. Without naming names, he tells the story about how he loved Cat but she was in love with Ned’s brother, who wanted to kill LF, but Cat spared his life and he was left with a large scar. And then he got killed and she married Ned. At this point the venom begins to pour forth and the girls nearly disappear for what really plays out like a mini-Shakespearean soliloqy only with orgasmic moaning in the background. Aidan Gillen, the actor, spits with Oldman-esque evil about how he learned from his duel that he’d never win. “Not that way, their game their rules. So I’m not going to fight them. I’m going to (bleep) them. That’s what I know. That’s what I am. Only by knowing what we are can we get what we want.”

What do you want?

“Everything there is.”

THIS more than the incestbaby moment might be the most holybleep moment of revelation.

Cut to Theon taunting Ossa the Wildling they captured after she and her two dead pals tried to jack Bran. He gives more of his family’s back story, but you’ve heard it before. They’re great at everything, apparently, except uprisings. Luwin breaks things up and Ossa gets to serve up some of that uh-oh kind of dialog about the White Walkers.

Luwin: “The things you speak of have been gone thousands of years.”

Ossa: “They’re not gone, old man. They were sleeping. And they ain’t sleeping no more.”

This could be a problem.

Cut to The Wall where Sam says he misses girls, well, he misses hearing them giggle. I giggle. A lone horse clomps back from north of the wall.

Jon: “Where’s my uncle?”

I’m guessing the horse won’t answer.

Cut to King’s Landing where Renly informs Ned what we all knew was gonna happen. Robert’s hunt went awry. Too much wine and too big a boar, and Robert is not long for this earth. But in the King Voice he talks about how he drove a dagger through its head after it ripped open his side, so not all is lost. He wants a feast where people can eat the boar. Must’ve been some boar.

The room gets cleared but for Ned who takes down Robert’s last wishes. It’s a lot of Kingspeak in which he sets up rule “until my son Joffrey comes of age.” Ned, in a first act of cunning, simply swaps out the word Jawfulry with “rightful heir.”

Robert feels bad about sending an assassin to kill Dany. If it’s not too late, he’s game to call it off. Even at death’s couch he’s kind of funny.

Ned: “I’ll do everything I can to honor your memory.”

Robert: Laughs. “My memory. King Robert Baratheon. Murdered by a pig.”

Outside Varys does that thing where he asks a question he knows the answer to, namely asking who got the king loaded? His squire, a Lannister, of course. He also says the whole assassin thing is a bell that can’t be unrung.

Cut to Dany trying to talk her husband into storming Westeros. He’s not terribly interested. She and Jorah go to the market. Jorah receives a royal pardon sent from Varys (hmm…) and Dany gets an eager market guy wanting to gift her some wine. Jorah suspects something’s up and orders the dude to drink it and the dude promptly flees only to get taken down by Dothraki.

Cut to The Wall. The new recruits get Ranger-ified and draw their assignments. Jon’s worried about Uncle Benjen. Then he gets to worry about something else. He landed the decided unswashbuckly job of being the personal steward for Lord Commander Mormont. He takes this news poorly but Sam talks him down.

Cut to Renly who wants to meet with Ned. Renly offers him 100 swords at his command. Ned is puzzled. Though Renly is sickened by the sight of blood he sees a chance to grab the throne. Ned’s not having it. What about Stannis? he asks. (We’ve not yet met Stannis.) They bicker but Ned’s not changing his mind so he sends a letter to Stannis.

It’s a procession of schemers. Next in the deli line is Littlefinger, who suggests making peace with Lannisters and cutting out Stannis, waiting til Jawfulry ascends to the throne and then revealing the secret about how he’s the kid with one grandfather. That’d be treason, sez Ned. “Only if we lose,” says LF. It’s like one of those temptation challenges on The Biggest Loser, only it doesn’t involve cupcakes.

Cut to Ghost (Jon’s direwolf) who brings Jon a hand from north of The Wall. Erp.

Cut to Khal Drogo, who has decided an assassination attempt on his teenage wife and unborn child is the kind of motivation that makes a guy afraid of the sea try to cross that sea anyway. But he does so in a dramatic chest-thumping way. He promises to kill the men in the iron suits and rape their women and enslave their children, which is always a curious thing to yell in front of a spouse.

Outside the Dothraki ride. And the would-be assassin is tethered to a horse, his dingle dangling for all the world to see (the angle of the dangle, it turns out, is directly proportional to weight of one’s fate). Normally this would be some sort of indignity, but his sentence is to stay tethered to the horse until his feet don’t carry him. Then he gets dragged until he’s donefor.

Ned is informed that King Jawfulry and the Queen Regent request his presence in the Throne Room. King Robert is dead. Littlefinger has apparently secured the Gold Cloak guards, who can be bribed. Renly didn’t stick around, he skipped town with Loras.

And there’s Jawfulry on the Iron Throne, instantly diminishing its awesomeness. He’s making bratty demands about being crowned and pledged fealty. Ned hands the honorable Ser Barristan Selmy Robert’s last orders, which bear his unbroken seal.

And then one of those oh no oh no moments: Cersei tears it up. “Is this meant to be your shield, Lord Stark? A piece of paper?”

The terms are simple: Kneel and swear loyalty and Ned can return to Winterfell.

Ned drops what he thinks is his bomb, that Jawfulry has no claim to the throne. Jawf throws a hissy fit and orders people killed and seized and killed. Ned doesn’t want bloodshed but it turns out he was outbid with regards to the guard. There are some chest spearings and Littlefinger puts a blade to Ned’s neck. “I did warn you not to trust me,” he sneers.

Roll credits.

The scorecard (scale of 1 to 10):

Jawfulryness: 10; that little thin-blooded flunky on the Iron Throne is deliberately designed to cause outrage among readers/viewers.

Doublecrosses: 10 or 1; on one hand, Littlefinger seemed helpful a while back. On the other, he’s clearly given no indication that he can be trusted.

Stag butchering: 9; docked a point because we don’t really get to the head.

Nekkidness: 10; gratuitous nude prostitutes and the poor failed assassin, who will soon savor the sweet taste of dirt, while his parts drag along.

King Voice: 10; you’ll be missed. Thanks for keeping your humor even as death fast approached.

Cersei: 10; stone cold.

Dehandings: 3; it was frozen and carried around like a dog toy. Eh.

Wrap-up:

Without giving away too much of what’s to come, it’s pretty clear to all here that Ned’s a guy good at checkers (in all of its black-and-whiteness) in a world of chess players. It’s worth noting that if you haven’t read the books, the fates of these characters play out in unexpected ways dozens of times over, so you’re nearing time to decide whether to wait a year for more of the story or to dive into the next bit. I do highly recommend the books.

And I forgot just how unrelentingly unsentimental they were. Sure, there’s a certain amount of bulk coldness that I’ll never forget, even though this is my first re-read of GOT in over 10 years. But littler things, like Ned’s attempt to spare Dany’s life, when no other voice harmonized with his, was sweetly honorable and doomed. GOT isn’t the best endorsement for friendship. Though it’s just as harsh in its presentation family, a cutthroat connection we’re born into.

GOT also seems a pretty blatant condemnation of excessive ambition, though it also might be of the mind that ambition is fairly inevitable. There’s certainly a feeling that we’re best in the nest and not meant to fly too far from home. Though one other thought worth airing was something that Ser Jorah said an episode or two ago when talking to Dany. He told her that these epic dramas play out grandly in the history books (or on an HBO series) but the vast majority of the kingdom didn’t care about the power struggles between the rich. That could be a damning comment about wealth, power or even the media.

Or it could just be a way to justify lots of scenes with spears protruding through chests.